What Jozani is
Jozani is the forest block of Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, the only national park on Unguja. It was gazetted as a forest reserve in 1960, became a conservation area in 1995 and a national park in 2004, and it is run by Zanzibar’s Department of Forestry and Non-renewable Natural Resources — not by TANAPA, which covers mainland parks only and is named as the managing body in several widely copied descriptions. Chwaka Bay, the mangrove and tidal system at the other end, is the same protected area under a different aspect.
Three different areas are published for it and they measure different things. The park authority gives 50 square kilometres. A 2021 UNEP and WIOMSA assessment gives about 56 of core with an 86 square kilometre buffer. UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme, which designated a biosphere reserve here in 2016, gives 21,274 hectares — 212 square kilometres — because that includes transition zones with 16,423 people living and farming in them.
The monkey
The reason almost everyone comes is the Zanzibar red colobus, Piliocolobus kirkii, which occurs on Unguja and nowhere else. It is Endangered on the IUCN Red List and listed on CITES Appendix I.
Its numbers are better than most published descriptions suggest. A survey running to January 2015, over 4,725 survey hours, counted 5,862 animals in 342 groups across the island, of which 4,042 — 69 per cent — were inside protected areas, with groups inside protection significantly larger than those outside. That is about three and a half times the mean of every previous estimate, and it supersedes the figures of a thousand, or sixteen hundred to three thousand, still in circulation.
The troops beside the forest path here are habituated and sit at close range, which makes this the easiest close primate encounter in Tanzania. Nobody should arrive expecting to work for the sighting. What is worth carrying instead is context: red colobus as a group are the most threatened monkeys in Africa. The primate watching guide covers that, and the feeding, distance and disease rules that apply here as everywhere.
The forest itself
Jozani is groundwater forest on a reef-limestone terrace, and it behaves unlike the coral rag scrub around it: rich black organic soil that stops abruptly at the forest margin and gives way to broken coral rag. It is the largest remaining stand of near-natural forest on Zanzibar.
The wider reserve records 291 plant species in 83 families, 21 of them threatened, and 168 bird species, 30 of global or regional importance; two BirdLife Important Bird Areas fall within it. Other rarities on the books include Ader’s duiker, which is Critically Endangered, the Zanzibar servaline genet, the tree hyrax and the Kassina Jozani frog; the Zanzibar leopard is presumed extinct. None of those figures in a normal visit, and a guide who promises them is overselling. Sykes’ monkeys work the forest edge and are seen more readily than anything except the colobus.
What a visit is
Short and flat: the forest trail is an easy walk of well under an hour, normally sold with the Pete-Jozani mangrove boardwalk, which the park authority lists as a separate attraction. Together they make a half morning. The park is about twenty minutes inland from the east coast beaches at Paje, Jambiani and Bwejuu.
Unusually for this coast, the money is accounted for in public: the park authority states that tourism revenue is split evenly between community and government, the community half going to a farmers’ union that compensates crop raiding and to a local conservation association. Almost nowhere else on these islands publishes that. Forest walks and conservation tours cover the reserve.
Common questions about Jozani Forest
How big is the park?
The park authority says 50 square kilometres. A 2021 UNEP and WIOMSA assessment gives about 56 with an 86 square kilometre buffer. UNESCO’s 21,274 hectares is the biosphere reserve, which includes inhabited transition zones and is four times the size of the park.
How many red colobus are there?
5,862 across the island in 342 groups, counted over two years to January 2015, with 69 per cent inside protected areas. That is roughly three and a half times older published estimates, and the figures of about a thousand still repeated in places are out of date.
Who runs it?
Zanzibar’s Department of Forestry and Non-renewable Natural Resources. TANAPA, which appears as the governing body in several copied descriptions, manages mainland national parks and has no role here.
Will I see Ader’s duiker or the servaline genet?
Realistically, no. Both are on the species list, Ader’s duiker is Critically Endangered, and neither is part of a daytime forest walk. Sykes’ monkeys are the other primate you will actually see.